Stoking Curiosity 2018 Evaluation Report
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Stoking Curiosity 2018 Evaluation Report (Artistic credit: More than Minutes, www.morethanminutes.co.uk) 1Prepared by Penny Vincent and Lotika Singha, with input from Oliver Hyam, Nicola Gratton, Kerry Jones and members of the Stoking Curiosity 2018 steering group. 1 Penny is Senior Lecturer for Community Engagement and Community Partnerships, Staffordshire University, Lotika is Public Engagement with Research Fellow, Keele University, Oliver is an undergraduate geography student at Staffordshire University, Nicola is Lead for Cultural and Connected Community Engagement, Staffordshire University, and Kerry is Arts and Public Engagement Officer, Keele University. Page | 1 Introduction Festivals ‘can be a fun and effective opportunity to engage with the public, making the most of the knowledge and talents of staff and students’ (National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement, 20182). Furthermore, a festival of ideas can enable higher education institutions to become cultural anchors for the communities they serve, animating languishing city and town spaces. The first Stoking Curiosity festival was held on 16 and 17 November 2018 at three sites within the historic Spode Works factory regeneration area in Stoke-on-Trent. It was led by Keele University and Staffordshire University and co-produced with input from local organisations, the people of Stoke-on-Trent and Newcastle-under-Lyme, and Stoke-on-Trent City Council. This evaluation report starts with an overview of the development of the concept underpinning the festival, and its aims, objectives and process. Then follows an analysis of the programme, visitor demographics, presenters and visitors’ festival experience, and what we could have done better. The concluding section reflects on the delivery and experience of the festival in terms of the original objectives and the civic university agenda. The report ends with specific recommendations that will enable the festival to grow into an annual, collaborative, popular public engagement event in the cultural calendar of the city of Stoke-on-Trent. From stoking ideas to Stoking Curiosity A festival of ideas at Stoke-on-Trent was first referenced in consultations on the city’s cultural strategy during the early legacy period of the Stoke 2021 City of Culture bid (2016–2018),3 when the city was actively planning for a series of festivals. It was noted that Stoke-on-Trent was the only large city in the UK that did not have a yearly festival of ideas. An opportunity arose in 2018 as part of the remit of the SEEK-PER4 project at Keele University. Given the project’s ethos to embed public engagement in research in Keele, with a focus on co-production and creativity, the project team proposed a university-led festival with a similar commitment. Practically, this became possible in May 2018, and a steering group comprising 15 people (Appendix A) was set up to take this forward. Seven members were affiliated with Keele and Staffordshire Universities. One member represented Stoke-on-Trent Council, and three members were part of the Cultural Forum, representing the city’s wider arts and cultural sector. Two members represented organisations and 2 https://www.publicengagement.ac.uk/do-engagement/choose-method/festivals 3 The Cultural Forum, which developed as part of bid, comprises a number of organisations and Task and Finish groups. Holding a festival of ideas was part of the discussion in the remit of the Programming Group. 4 In September 2017, Keele was only one of seven universities to be awarded the Research Councils UK (RCUK) two-year Strategic Support to Expedite Embedding Public Engagement with Research (SEE-PER) grant (https://www.ukri.org/public-engagement/research-council-partners-and-public-engagement-with- research/embedding-public-engagement/strategic-support-to-expedite-embedding-public-engagement-with- research/), with oversight from the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement. Being part of this programme provided Keele the necessary springboard for launching the process of embedding public engagement with research in its wider research cultures and activities. Since then, the RCUK has developed into UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). We use the term UKRI in the rest of the report. Page | 2 community groups working with marginalised social groups and two people were lay members of a community-university action network. The steering group agreed to avoid a ‘template’ approach for the kinds of knowledge that could be shared between academia and community at the festival. Rather, the festival would be a space for developing and nurturing partnerships and relationships for research using a range of innovative methodologies from co-production to outreach, among academia, the general public(s), specific community groups, and non-academic organisations. In this way, the festival would showcase the wide-ranging potential of higher education while providing a platform for non- academics, including people from the arts and cultural sector, to share knowledge, knowledge production and creativity in a university–community engagement space. Hence, instead of a ‘festival of ideas’, the group considered an approach centred on curiosity. As curiosity is rooted in ‘ideas’, this approach would encourage development of co-produced and creative research methodologies through audience participation in those ideas. This approach would also allow space for diversity in the programme and knowledge sharing through meaningful and responsible engagement. Finally, it would enable people to think and explore things that they otherwise may not be exposed to or hesitate to try or have an opportunity to experience. We chose ‘Stoking Curiosity’ as the title, as it stoked the festival’s aspiration to embed the connections between Keele and Staffordshire Universities and the local communities across Stoke- on-Trent and Staffordshire and beyond. The historic Spode pottery in the town of Stoke was selected as the festival site. The spirit behind the redevelopment at the derelict factory site is about looking to the future while celebrating the past. With a history of more than 300 years of continuous pottery production, Spode Works continues to be associated with innovation and creativity. Today, it houses several site partners, including the Spode Museum Trust, the Potbank (including aparthotel), ACAVA studios, the Clay Foundation (British Ceramics Biennial), Friends of Spode Rose Garden, CentreSpace Gallery and Paul Adamiec Ceramics. Spode Museum Trust is custodian of the world-class Spode Collection that includes ceramic items, hand-engraved copper plates and extensive paper archives and pattern books. The Museum Trust is working with the National Trust regarding next-step opportunities for the Collection and Museum. The Potbank development comprises the buildings housing Spode’s design and decorating workshops in the 1800s, which were built on a rich seam of broken pottery accumulating over decades. When the buildings were acquired by the Dog and Bone Group in 2017, they were occupied by pigeons, a grand piano and plants growing through walls, with badly leaking roofs. With the internal walls stripped back to their early 19th-century brickwork, renewable energy heating and recycled rainwater from its rooftops, the Potbank is a good example of sustainable regeneration. The Spode Works ACAVA studios opened in 2016 and are part of the educational charity ‘Association for Cultural Advancement through Visual Art’, established in 1983 to support the development and practice of the visual arts. ACAVA provides facilities to professional artists and encourages them to develop public art and projects to benefit Page | 3 their communities. This rich mix of heritage and contemporary excellence is a unique opportunity for sustainable social, cultural and economic development. Discussions with the various constituencies at the factory site revealed enthusiasm for developing deeper interconnections between themselves as well as with the universities and other local communities and organisations through a public engagement festival. A two-day festival was planned to allow exploring the possibilities and desired outcomes and demonstrate our ability to work together and deliver. As the festival would not be about knowledge curation, but about enabling academics and communities to engage in creative ways to create impact on ‘place’ and in various other ways, the partnerships developed in the first year could be built on to embark on a rolling programme for a gradually scaled up annual festival event. Festival aim, objectives and outcomes The festival vision translated into an overarching aim of demonstrating the social value of academic research and its relevance to real lives, with three-way objectives: 1. For academics, it would be a public engagement platform to: present research to a diverse or more specific non-academic audience that would not usually have access to this research; expand their academic knowledge base with new learnings gained through conversations with ‘different’ audiences; and demonstrate to the university senior management the value of embedding public engagement in the university’s wider research strategy. 2. For the festival audiences, it would be an opportunity: to engage, ask questions, have a voice, give opinions, and be curious; to develop greater interest in the arts, sciences and humanities, particularly among those publics who do not usually engage with higher education; to increase understanding of the value